Terry Funk. What a damn name.
If you’re reading this off the heels of his passing at the age of 79, you’re as rattled as I am. It’s setting in for me, but these are bittersweet tears – sadness for losing him, but glad he lived such a wild and chaotic life that will go down in the history books.
I will cut right to the chase and explain what his life and death mean for the whole of professional wrestling because he is a hole that cannot be sealed by any metric.
Doubtless, you’ve seen many peers, friends, and fans pour their hearts out. Veterans and stars will likely share their stories for the oncoming weeks, months, and years to come, as it was when he was still here with us. If his insane amount of work has touched you, you’re likely spending time absorbing it and appreciating that which he has given us. Cherish those because there won’t be another Terry Funk.
There’s no quantifying or cloning Terry Funk. What he’s done for the industry cannot be repaid, for it has been decades upon decades of work. And he so loved this business that he could never entirely stay away.
In the time he’s existed in this medium, he’s put his fingerprints all over and redefined what it meant to be a wrestler as he kept his career fresh and reinvigorating. Where others in the industry would age into looking down on the ever-evolving state of professional wrestling, The Funker wholly embraced it because, warts and all this is the industry he loved.
Why, he was born into and inherited this entity he bore upon his back. Born in Hammond, Indiana, Terry‘s family would move to a place that rested as crucial to him – Amarillo, Texas, following World War II. The youngster would attend West Texas State University, competing in amateur wrestling and American football, and would do so until his true calling summoned him.
His father, Dory Funk Sr., signed Terry to the Funk-owned promotion Western States Sports in Amarillo, Texas. Terry’s first match would take place against Sputnik Monroe in September 1965. It was at Western States Sports where he and his brother Dory Funk Jr. would establish their names and cut their teeth, notably against the likes of stars such as Ernie Ladd and Hank James.
From there, the pair would become stars, but with Terry putting on insane bloody brawls in the southern and Japanese territories in the National Wrestling Alliance and All Japan Pro Wrestling, he’d cap that off with two incredible matches with Ric Flair in WCW during 1989 – including Great American Bash and Clash of the Champions IX: New York Knockout, the latter of which was the famous “I Quit” Match that sits at five-stars by Dave Meltzer.
Following this decade, Terry’s ‘90s would consist of a departure from the traditional southern wrestling style for the hardcore and deathmatch style popularized by FMW. A personal favorite of mine from this period was his No Ring Exploding Barbed Wire Time Bomb Death Match with Atsushi Onita in May of 1993.
Terry Funk, in the hopes of helping the fledgling ECW, become a star promotion by putting over its younger stars, which he did with no hesitation. This period would see him as ECW World Heavyweight Champion in 1997 as he not only helped revolutionize the industry during the Monday Night Wars and the Attitude Era, but he also changed the trajectory of his career.
Such was the case yet again after a brief stint at the start of WWE’s iteration of ECW in the mid-2000s. Still, he also helped promote the rising tide of the independent scene, performing against younger wrestlers who had yet to make their names, such as CM Punk in Ring of Honor and the Extreme Horsemen in Major League Wrestling.
Terry so loved the independent scene that he would have his brief moments during the 2010s making appearances, such as his assault on Eddie Kingston and The Duke in AIW’s Big Trouble in Little Cleveland even in 2015, or teaming with the Rock N’ Roll Express against Doug Gilbert, Jerry Lawler, and Brian Christopher at a Big Time Wrestling event in 2017.
Terry Funk never could quit wrestling. It was a brand, and a brand sticks – there’s no turning back from it now. This drenches him in the aura of being a cowboy and an outlaw. He was always meant to go against the mold and shift the powers that be in professional wrestling. Ever the catalyst, the industry never let him go, no matter how many times he tried to retire from it.
So loyal he was to the game that being told he should never be able to walk again for the rest of his life without feeling pain did not even deter him. That level of dedication proves how tied he was to all of this. You need only watch the 1999 documentary Beyond the Mat to see what wrestling meant to him truly. This is the wrestler mentality: even when you have nothing to give, you give it all and then give some more.
Even when he stopped stepping in the ring, he was still a presence, as shown in his now beloved Highspots Wrestling Network commercial during the pandemic.
When it was reported that he was living with dementia, however, the industry and fanbase’s collective hearts were broken. Sure, the physical toll of wrestling is something that fills people with awe and sympathy, but what is done to the brain is equally heart-wrenching. Knowing that this man who has lived with a storied career, forever entombed and immortalized in the art of the squared circle, would now struggle to remember these golden days, it was a tough pill to swallow.
It hurt because we will never forget. Professional wrestling will always remember. And the reason for that is that Terry Funk, though not in our Earthly realm in life, is because he will never die.
Everything he’s done, everything lives on and breathes. Whether it’s “Hangman” Adam Page vs Jon Moxley at AEW’s 2023 Revolution, Eddie Kingston’s heart-wrenching promos, or Athena beating the absolute piss out of everyone in a mad brawl, Funk’s blood still drips here. And as Jay Briscoe once pointed out, he did it all without wearing a mouthpiece.
So long as every wrestler remembers him and what he stood for, the road of wrestling will be paved with those willing to give to it. That is the Terry Funk legacy, and to our fans and the wrestlers, we must never forget that because this man poured his heart and soul out so this doesn’t end up forgotten, even when the machine wants to leave people like him behind.
As the sun sets in all the tomorrows on the Amarillo sky, please take in what we have now because that sly old dog did it all with his worn voice and wild aesthetic. The Funker was simple, yet chaotic, and nothing that can be replicated. There will never be another Terry Funk.
As I stated earlier, you can’t quantify Terry Funk.
